UX Content Design Dissolves the Friction

error! Forbidden! The User is Not Recognized!

Is your enterprise application company finally getting it that modern tech writing can’t be limited to writing specs or documenting usage?

Writing and designing content for modern application interfaces (UIs), is an emerging field, with professionals using a number of titles: UX Writer, UX Content Designer, Content Strategist. 

If you’re seeing more useful, engaging and conversational messages and instructional content in applications today, you have a UX writer to thank. Even more, if your task flows seem so intuitive that you’re starting to think that you may be directing them using only your thoughts, thank a UX writer. 

That's because great content design dissolves the friction between intention and task completion.

Out with the palpitation-inducing, “404 NOT Found” messages, and in with the calmer, more comprehensible “I can’t seem to find that page, try entering the URL again” messages. (normal blood pressure levels restored).

Yes, User Experience groups - and users! - are getting better traction now (ok, “respect”), designing some really elegant interaction models where once only developer-centered interfaces existed. Modern UIs free an app user from the life of a command-line jockey by putting the Xs and Os back into the computer where they belong, and providing clear and recognizable language onscreen to guide users through complex flows. That's commitment to the last, big design step.

You Don't Wear Your Underwear on the Outside of Your Pants

Yes, enterprise application software is hella complex to design and build. And it is even more complex to design in a way that makes it simple to operate. But the user doesn’t have to know that! And this is where UX writers come in.

Good content design lets the software programming do the hard work, way down under the covers while the UI engages users with some form of a relatable, often conversational language and tone. Just as interaction designers bring an understanding of user psychology into interaction, a UX writer’s special powers are a strong awareness of communication psychology and knowing how language impacts the way we feel about the things we're seeing and doing. 

It's clearer & more appealing to read,

“Your new apps will appear here!”

than to be stiff-armed by this static, negative message:

“You don’t have access to any apps.”

UX design teams should integrate content designers on the team because textual content is the communicative element that users see, react to, and relate to most consistently. If users aren’t happy with the way their application “speaks” to them, then they’re not going to like it; they could feel that it’s too complicated and might even judge that it doesn’t work very well.

App users want what everybody wants! They want to be engaged and feel successful, and to have confidence in the predictability of successful interactions. What would also be really nice would be if the app could, like, read your mind, right? Well, a good content design, thoughtfully expressed, can help the application do that.

If UX were a milking stool, then content design would be the necessary third leg of the stool, along with interaction and visual design. 

As a UX writer, I also help with a usability review of the UI, showing where a language change can reduce ambiguity in task progression, or eliminate the number of steps in a design flow ­- but I wouldn’t be asked to design the overall interaction or engineer the software. 

Likewise, a company shouldn’t ask a developer, a visual designer, or an interaction designer to craft the textual features of the interface. 

Oh, wait…. Well, some companies still do that. That’s why we still see annoying and cryptic remnants like this.

Fine UX writing reduces the effort it takes for a user to become familiar with and rely on the app. It invites users into the flow and makes them feel that interaction is intuitive: sensible, reliable, expected, and achievable.

Lastly, UX writing should create a content style that flows so naturally that the UI actually gets out of the way of the user. Great UX content can create its own kind of momentum, propelling users from one action to the next as effortlessly as if the process were their own idea.

That’s why UX writing is the final element of good UX design.

The views and opinions in this article are strictly my own. Contact me at UXwriter@yahoo.com if you'd like to talk to me about UX writing and design.